This is going to be a bit of a link-fest, because so many people wrote posts in various places that made me go "ooh, awesome, must share with people who actually care about publishing writing and stories!" (and sadly, the venn diagram between that group and the group of people who follow me in Google Reader or Google+ has a microscopic overlap).

So, the on-topic links first: publisher Simon & Shuster has signed a deal with John Locke to publish his incredibly popular Donovan Creed books. But this is the important part: the deal is only for print distribution. Locke retains rights to his ebooks to sell how he wants, S&S are only doing the print distribution. Michael Shatzkin, in his usual style, has some interesting thoughts on where this might lead. It's what a lot of the peanut gallery have been pointing at and cheering towards, and I'm hopeful it's the next step toward a new publishing paradigm.

At the risk of sounding paint-dryingly dull, this is economic logic. If two entities can both produce the same materials, but vary in their efficiency of each, then the most efficient form of production is for each entity to produce the material that it can produce most efficiently and then trade with the other. Authors can produce and publish e-books far faster and more efficiently than publishers can - without the overhead of running a publishing company, their costs are much lower. However, print distribution is much, much harder for an individual author. A publishing house is equipped exactly for print distribution; their overheads (which make them poorer ebook producers) make them better qualified for print production. So logically, the most efficient solution is for the author to produce the ebook on their own bat, and for the publisher to select successful ebooks to turn into print editions.

Now, the extension of that logic is the publisher also taking a smaller chunk of the pie. Why? They're no longer taking huge risks on unproven works. Instead, they follow demand and produce print editions of what's already popular. (Though there's nothing stopping them then developing those authors as they used to, or keeping their existing authors in deals.) They use the only real "gatekeeper" - the readers themselves - to determine what should be published. 

Bad news for agents there, I guess. And it remains to be seen how feasible this is - after all, the more bookstores that disappear, and the less shelf space there is available, the less relevant print distribution becomes. While traditional publishing certainly isn't going to go away, it's going to have to make some pretty radical changes to survive. But the Locke deal is a sign of hope that they're starting to adapt and try new approaches in order to do just that.

In unrelated news:

Joe Konrath  and Blake Crouch have a conversation about ebooks and publishing. Interesting, insightful and informative as always.

Steve Saus posts some good links on the discussion of publishers having to justify their existence.

Eric, over at Pimp My Novel, has a list I'm tempted to print and stick to my wall - in keeping your butt in the chair.

And on a similar vein, Elana Johnson has a great post on balancing writing with other aspects of your life.